The phrase "a painful example" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation or instance that serves as a lesson or warning, often due to its negative or distressing nature.
Example: "The company's bankruptcy was a painful example of the consequences of poor financial management."
Alternatives: "a distressing case" or "a hard lesson".
Is a painful example of the inconsistency of inspectors' judgments, which the watchdog recently owned up to.
He sees the job as an exercise in complete humiliation, and training a painful example of corporate humorlessness.
Zimbabwe, just to the north of us, is a painful example of such a country; Mugabe and Zanu-PF have been in power for 36 years.
(Charles Isherwood)20091119 'BYE BYE BIRobert Longbottombottom's color-coded revival of this 1960 musical satire is a painful example of misapplied talent.
Japan's recent experience offers a painful example of how a collapse in share or property prices can harm a banking system.Since pricking a financial bubble is a risky business, it is clearly better for central banks to step in early to prevent one developing.
"This is a painful example of the problem with the current law, which literally puts handcuffs on 16- and 17-year-olds as well as the judges in criminal court," said Steven Banks, chief lawyer at the Legal Aid Society, which represented the teenager.
You won't find a more painful example of a country (or parts of it) pulling the wool over its own eyes, however, than a story that emerged this week.
To cite a particularly painful example, Thabo Mbeki, the former President of South Africa and an AIDS denier, refused to recognize Western pharmaceutical solutions to the H.I.V. epidemic.
A particularly painful example may be occurring right now.
Eating disorders are just an unavoidable, painful example of the way lessons about what matters about the way we look can get applied to our every day.
Reactions to Gillette's recent video The Best a Man Can Be are a flagrant, and painful, example of how unable we've become to hold two juxtaposed views.
